WIlson had nothing to do with the leak either. He was however apparently an eye-witness to at least one event, and when asked yesterday, he did acknowledge that he knew about it. But he hadn’t talked about it — his statement yesterday was that multiple people saw the one occurance, and any one of them could have talked to Politico if asked.
That’s the problem with this “conspiracy”. It seems more than a dozen people had detailed knowledge of the charges and the settlement, and they were all publicly associated with the NRA. SO any reporter calling up employees and associates of the NRA from the 1990s would have spoken with these people, and it only would take ONE of them to mention this case for the reporter to have the story and dig deeper.
We know reporters ARE calling everybody — that’s how they got the story of Perry’s rock, by calling friends of the family from the 1980s.
Only an amateur, inexperienced politician would think that a news outlet wasn’t going to learn about a harrassment charge that ended with a settlement, when multiple people know about it. You’d be naive to believe anything like that could remain a secret.